


The Bitter Boy

by deathwailart



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 05:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Snow character study written for a friend.  No real spoilers beyond the season 1 finale for the series or beyond the first book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter Boy

Stark blood and Snow name, no name really, just the bastard name for the North. Bastard boy of a bastard name. Like all the others, snow and sand, waters and rivers and pyke, stone and storm, flowers and hill; they're not even names, just things. He wants to be his father's son and he is in all but name, the very same dishonour, the thing that darkens the mood of Lady Catelyn but can he be an honourable man if he was born of the time Lord Eddard Stark forgot his? Maybe Jon is just as blind as Sansa to some things in the world, Sansa who thinks the world is full of the gilded knights and delicate ladies from all her tales and songs. Jon painted the Wall and the Night's Watch to be some band of brothers, together against the dread of the frozen land beyond. The beasts that Old Nan painted in her stories when he and Robb were small and refused to be separated, brothers to the end, close as if they were twins. He wonders if his appearance is what galls Lady Catelyn so much, that her firstborn, the next Lord of Winterfell has the Tully colouring of the South, the interloper, the stain the one to be more Stark in looks than hers.  
  
He thinks Robb's lucky. Robb knows what comes from his mother. Jon only knows his father's face, only knows the North, nothing of the South of where he once came from.   
  
The Wall will be his. It's more than bastards should hope for. Raised like a lordling with a family who loved him, raised to know what it was to fight, raised to have honour. Who are his brothers now? Not Robb who was every inch his father's son. Not Bran who was half-squirrel surely. Not little Rickon clinging to one of them. He has rapers and thieves and all the unwanted things that have no other place, banished and he has to be equal with them when he was treated as more.   
  
Lord Snow.  
  
Almost makes him laugh but he knows what it means. The Lord of nothing. Lord of nothing but a training yard he has to help whip into shape and how do they not know how to wield swords? Lord of nothing who will never pass on a bastard name to some poor child and who will never know the warmth of a woman's arms. Not that they would have let him feel the love he wanted. He was never tucked in tight by a mother from a house where family is everything. His father loved him under the watchful eyes of Lady Catelyn but his father was a soldier, a man who had lost father, sister, brother and there was ever the undercurrent. Winter was coming. The cold winds were rising. Summer would not last and the Old Gods would whisper through the Godswood. A strong man to keep building a strong house for the next generation in the way of old namesakes. Lady Catelyn with her Southern warmth was the one to tuck the children in, kissing brows, stoking fires in the hearth, saying prayers to the Seven.  
  
Bastard's have no place. Not noble bastards. Not a boy still expected to carry Lord Eddard's honour. Maybe that's why he tries to be as honourable, why he holds his ideals tighter than his cloak up at the top of the Wall overlooking the edge of the world. If he tries hard enough, if he clings doggedly then he'll repair the dishonour that he lives and breathes. Ghost nudges, hot breath puffing up the gap between Jon's sleeve and glove and it brings a smile to his face, a little reminder that he's not the only one with no place, dreaming where he is the wolf, where the world is his, all the North whispering of the great white monster at the head of the pack, not direwolves but scrappy things, outcasts and runts and scarred things.  
  
A bastard's dreams. The dreams of one who reaches beyond his grasp. One day he'll find Uncle Benjen and one day he'll be Lord-Commander of the Night's Watch and he and Robb will greet one another, Stark and Snow, Lord-Commander and the King in the North and all the North will be theirs between them before the long night descends and winter buries them.


End file.
